I think you'll find a significant number of people who decide not to enter competitions because their music just won't fit in that world.

I think of myself as experimenting with different ways of structuring pieces. A lot of it has to do with the computer, of course.

I found myself recycling ideas and I saw that I had to invent reasons to compose a piece rather than start from some exciting idea.

When you have performers, there's the uniqueness of live performance and what performers do in concerts.

If the music has a logic of its own - as I think my music has - an open-minded listener will apprehend and understand.

I came up in the '60s; that was a time when there was a revolution going on in music. Stravinsky had become a twelve-tone composer; even Aaron Copland was writing twelve-tone pieces at that time!

I was very fortunate to be at a wealthy institution. I do recognize the drawbacks and limitations of the academic world but it's basically the world I grew up in and there's no way in which I would have been able to survive in the so-called real world.